se are a
few of the bright promises held out to us in the Book of Life. Are we
not blest? "The joys of heaven," says Bishop Norris, "are without
example, above experience, and beyond imagination, for which the whole
creation wants a comparison; we an apprehension; and even the Word of
God a revelation." "Heaven," says Shakspeare, "is the treasury of
everlasting joy." "By heaven we understand a state of happiness," says
Franklin, "infinite in degree, and endless in duration." With man's
finite mind man solaces himself with

PICTURES OF PARADISE

mortal in their scope. He is not to be blamed for this, for it is God's
will to let him grope in darkness a few short years. But man's
imagination in all earthly things conjures up that which is far beyond
the earthly reality, leaving him a prey to dissatisfaction. How good to
believe that our imagination finds in heaven a field where all our most
beautiful ideas, collated, joined and woven together into a whole, fail
to approach the true glories of the home in the far skies which our kind
Father, taking us in His arms, will open before us. "How should we
rejoice," says Sir Robert Hall, "in the prospect,

THE CERTAINTY, RATHER,

of spending a blissful eternity with those whom we loved on earth; of
seeing them emerge from the ruins of the tomb and the deeper ruins of
the fall, not only uninjured, but refined and perfected, 'with every
tear wiped from their eyes,' standing before the throne of God and the
Lamb, 'in white robes and palms in their hands, crying with a loud
voice, Salvation to God that sitteth upon the throne, and to the Lamb,
for ever and ever!'

WHAT DELIGHT WILL IT AFFORD

to renew the sweet counsel we have taken together, to recount the toils
of combat and the labor of the way, and to approach, not the house, but
the throne of God in company, in order to join in the symphonies of
heavenly voices, and lose ourselves amid the splendor and fruition of
the beatific vision!" Dr. Dick supposes that the soul may find endless
employment in beholding "those magnificent displays which will be
exhibited of the extent, the magnitude, the motions, the mechanism, the
scenery, the inhabitants, and the general constitution of other systems,
and the general arrangement and order of the universal system
comprehended under the government of the Almighty."

THIS IS ENTIRELY IN REASON.

So far as we are able to judge, there is absolutely no limit to the
universe of